| NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | EXAMPLES | NOTES | HISTORY | SEE ALSO | NOTES | COLOPHON | |
|  | 
SD_PATH_LOOKUP(3)             sd_path_lookup            SD_PATH_LOOKUP(3)
       sd_path_lookup, sd_path_lookup_strv - Query well-known file system
       paths
       #include <systemd/sd-path.h>
       enum {
               SD_PATH_TEMPORARY,
               SD_PATH_TEMPORARY_LARGE,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEM_BINARIES,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEM_INCLUDE,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEM_LIBRARY_PRIVATE,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEM_LIBRARY_ARCH,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEM_SHARED,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEM_CONFIGURATION_FACTORY,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEM_STATE_FACTORY,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEM_CONFIGURATION,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEM_RUNTIME,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEM_RUNTIME_LOGS,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEM_STATE_PRIVATE,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEM_STATE_LOGS,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEM_STATE_CACHE,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEM_STATE_SPOOL,
               SD_PATH_USER_BINARIES,
               SD_PATH_USER_LIBRARY_PRIVATE,
               SD_PATH_USER_LIBRARY_ARCH,
               SD_PATH_USER_SHARED,
               SD_PATH_USER_CONFIGURATION,
               SD_PATH_USER_RUNTIME,
               SD_PATH_USER_STATE_PRIVATE,
               SD_PATH_USER_STATE_CACHE,
               SD_PATH_USER,
               SD_PATH_USER_DOCUMENTS,
               SD_PATH_USER_MUSIC,
               SD_PATH_USER_PICTURES,
               SD_PATH_USER_VIDEOS,
               SD_PATH_USER_DOWNLOAD,
               SD_PATH_USER_PUBLIC,
               SD_PATH_USER_TEMPLATES,
               SD_PATH_USER_DESKTOP,
               SD_PATH_SEARCH_BINARIES,
               SD_PATH_SEARCH_BINARIES_DEFAULT,
               SD_PATH_SEARCH_LIBRARY_PRIVATE,
               SD_PATH_SEARCH_LIBRARY_ARCH,
               SD_PATH_SEARCH_SHARED,
               SD_PATH_SEARCH_CONFIGURATION_FACTORY,
               SD_PATH_SEARCH_STATE_FACTORY,
               SD_PATH_SEARCH_CONFIGURATION,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEMD_UTIL,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEMD_SYSTEM_UNIT,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEMD_SYSTEM_PRESET,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEMD_USER_UNIT,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEMD_USER_PRESET,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEMD_SYSTEM_CONF,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEMD_USER_CONF,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEMD_SEARCH_SYSTEM_UNIT,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEMD_SEARCH_USER_UNIT,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEMD_SYSTEM_GENERATOR,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEMD_USER_GENERATOR,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEMD_SEARCH_SYSTEM_GENERATOR,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEMD_SEARCH_USER_GENERATOR,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEMD_SLEEP,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEMD_SHUTDOWN,
               SD_PATH_TMPFILES,
               SD_PATH_SYSUSERS,
               SD_PATH_SYSCTL,
               SD_PATH_BINFMT,
               SD_PATH_MODULES_LOAD,
               SD_PATH_CATALOG,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEMD_SEARCH_NETWORK,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEMD_SYSTEM_ENVIRONMENT_GENERATOR,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEMD_USER_ENVIRONMENT_GENERATOR,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEMD_SEARCH_SYSTEM_ENVIRONMENT_GENERATOR,
               SD_PATH_SYSTEMD_SEARCH_USER_ENVIRONMENT_GENERATOR,
       };
       int sd_path_lookup(uint64_t type, const char *suffix,
                          char **paths);
       int sd_path_lookup_strv(uint64_t type, const char *suffix,
                               char ***paths);
       sd_path_lookup() and sd_bus_path_lookup_strv() return a single
       path or set of file system paths specified by the argument type.
       In case of sd_path_lookup() a single NUL-terminated string is
       returned. When type specifies a set of paths, they are
       concatenated using ":" as a separator (as is traditionally done
       for e.g.  $PATH or $LD_LIBRARY_PATH). In case of
       sd_path_lookup_strv() a NULL-terminated array of strings is
       returned (strv). If suffix suffix is given, it is concatenated to
       each of the paths after a slash ("/"). All returned paths are
       absolute.
       For paths which refer to user directories, the relevant XDG
       standard is followed, with support for environment variables like
       $XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR, $XDG_DESKTOP_DIR, ..., and explicit
       configuration in /etc/xdg/user-dirs.conf or
       ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/user-dirs.dirs. See XDG Base Directory
       Specification[1] for details.
       systemd-path(1) is a wrapper around sd_path_lookup() and allows
       the same set of paths to be queried.
       On success, sd_path_lookup() and sd_path_lookup_strv() return a
       non-negative integer. On failure, a negative errno-style error
       number is returned by either function.
       The returned string or string array (strv) must be free(3)'d by
       the caller.
   Errors
       Returned errors may indicate the following problems:
       -EOPNOTSUPP
           Unknown identifier type.
           Added in version 246.
       -EINVAL
           Output argument is NULL.
           Added in version 246.
       -ENXIO
           Query failed because of an undefined environment variable
           (e.g. for SD_PATH_USER_RUNTIME when $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is not
           defined).
           Added in version 246.
       -ENOMEM
           Memory allocation failed.
           Added in version 246.
   Look up the location of ~/Documents
           /* SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT-0 */
           #include <stdio.h>
           #include <stdlib.h>
           #include <systemd/sd-path.h>
           int main(void) {
             int r;
             char *t;
             r = sd_path_lookup(SD_PATH_USER_DOCUMENTS, NULL, &t);
             if (r < 0)
               return EXIT_FAILURE;
             printf("~/Documents: %s\n", t);
             free(t);
             return EXIT_SUCCESS;
           }
       Note that the default answer of $HOME/Documents may be overridden
       by user-dirs.conf or $XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR.
       Functions described here are available as a shared library, which
       can be compiled against and linked to with the
       libsystemd pkg-config(1) file.
       The code described here uses getenv(3), which is declared to be
       not multi-thread-safe. This means that the code calling the
       functions described here must not call setenv(3) from a parallel
       thread. It is recommended to only do calls to setenv() from an
       early phase of the program when no other threads have been
       started.
       sd_path_lookup() and sd_path_lookup_strv() were added in version
       246.
       systemd(1), sd-path(3), systemd-path(1)
        1. XDG Base Directory Specification
           https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html
       This page is part of the systemd (systemd system and service
       manager) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd⟩.  If you have a
       bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/#bugreports⟩.
       This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/systemd/systemd.git⟩ on 2025-08-11.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
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       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org
systemd 258~rc2                                         SD_PATH_LOOKUP(3)
Pages that refer to this page: systemd.directives(7), systemd.index(7)